This invention relates to use of a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide for treating bacterial infectious disease due to strains of pathogenic bacterial species, which have become resistant to conventional antibiotics.
Advancement of the chemotherapeutical techniques and, particularly, development of a variety of antibiotics have realized a drastic reduction of bacterial infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, dysentery, etc. However, these achievements have invited, on the other hand, a rapid increase of the so-called drug-resistant bacterial strains which defy the existing chemotherapeutics. To make the matter worse, many "multiple-drug-resistant bacteria", that is, strains of bacteria resistant to two or more kinds of drugs, have developed in the serious bacterial genera such as Mycobacteria, Shigella, Staphylococci, etc., and these newcomers are posing a serious problem in the field of chemotherapy against such infectious diseases.
For such reasons, antibiotic preparations usually have a short life cycle and hence the drug manufacturers are compelled to market new kinds of antibiotics one after another in rapid succession at an enormous cost. This can result in a huge loss which cannot be ignored from the viewpoint of social economy.